Invite Friends & Family

The holiday push for the Good Life initiative has re-focused on teeing up North Dakotan’s to talk about in-state opportunities, for their friends and family, who may be home for the holidays. Through a continuing partnership with Midcontinent Communications, the television spot-https://youtu.be/FFANjfwDiJ0-, was updated to reflect the lower number of job vacancies and to highlight the mid-level positions available in technology, manufacturing, healthcare and engineering. The cable advertising spot will run in the PSA pool from November 21--December 26. The television ad will be supported by the in-state billboards Newman Signs has provided as well as social media posts.

2017 Digital Marketing Plan

A new marketing wave will begin in mid-January. The campaign will include the most successful elements from past years and target potential job seekers with a college education who are 25-49 and live in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The primary audience is known job seekers. The secondary audience will have three niche segments; the first segment will be military personnel living on or near military bases in Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan and WI as well as military bases in Ft. Hood, Bliss and Sam Houston in Texas and Lewis McChord in Seattle. The second segment will be entrepreneurs 25-49 and the third segment will be targeting healthcare related fields, all in our target states. The campaign begins with native digital advertising. This format allows our messaging to be integrated into publisher’s editorial streams making it look more like news than advertising. It also allows us to provide links to partner websites. We will target military, entrepreneur and healthcare mailing lists with email deployments in January and February. Digital display ads and pre-roll video, will run March 1–May 31st.

The strategy will be to build additional awareness among job seekers that North Dakota has employment opportunities, influencing them to make a move to North Dakota for work, as well as to educate our target audience on all the great communities and companies available for them to Find the Good Life in North Dakota. The primary objective is to drive traffic to the website where intent can be qualified through tracking of specific user activities and information requests.

Recruiter Network

With 35 members represented by 79 individuals, the Recruiter Network continues to grow and collaborate. A quarterly meeting was held in Carrington, hosted by Dakota Growers Pasta in November. The agenda included an update on the 2017 Find the Good Life ad campaign, as well as current workforce initiatives to be involved in or aware of, a facilitated show-and-tell of referral plans, a presentation on the Department of Commerce’s Youth Office, and a presentation from Dakota Growers and the Carrington Developers on their new campaign, Consider Carrington – a marketing effort to showcase and attract residents to their community.

New members include Case New Holland, Roers, Dakota Growers Pasta Company, Essentia Health, and Carrington Area Developers. Renewed members include Steffes Corporation and Bethany Retirement Living.